Latrinsorm
07-06-2014, 04:46 PM
In terms of professional men's team sports, there are three global (soccer, volleyball, basketball) and three international (baseball in the American sphere, cricket in the British sphere, hockey in the Frigid sphere). Which country is the best across all six?
All six sports have an international governing body, and all six bodies give global rankings. However, these rankings are not based on consistent models: soccer, volleyball, basketball, and baseball use roughly the same, hockey has a much more forgiving metric for sub-elite countries, and cricket is its own deal that I'll get into later. If we take the average of the top four countries and divide any given country into that average, we so happen to get 20 countries with a total of 1 or higher. (For Great Britain I used England's soccer score.)
soccer base basket volley total country
0.79 1.15 1.37 0.63 3.95 USA
1.14 0.14 1.29 0.11 2.68 Spain
0.95 0.16 0.32 1.19 2.63 Brazil
0.68 0.03 0.51 1.18 2.41 Russia
0.90 0.08 0.71 0.59 2.29 Argentina
0.85 0.32 0.11 0.99 2.27 Italy
0.27 0.96 0.01 0.59 1.84 Cuba
0.48 1.06 0.03 0.18 1.75 Japan
1.00 0.12 0.21 0.42 1.74 Germany
0.75 0.66 0.00 0.08 1.49 Netherlands
0.57 0.00 0.28 0.58 1.44 Serbia
0.70 0.04 0.41 0.20 1.35 France
0.40 0.21 0.34 0.22 1.17 Australia
0.22 0.59 0.07 0.27 1.16 Canada
0.87 0.14 0.00 0.11 1.13 Colombia
0.42 0.48 0.04 0.15 1.10 Korea
0.52 0.44 0.05 0.08 1.09 Venezuela
0.55 0.00 0.43 0.04 1.02 Turkey
0.84 0.08 0.10 0.00 1.01 Great Britain
0.36 0.01 0.03 0.61 1.01 Poland
Values taken from FIFA (June 2014), IFAB (not listed so my guess is 2014), FIBA (Sep 2013, they're lazy), and FIVB (Jan 2014) respectively.
Cricket is complicated because there are 4 different kinds of cricket: Test, ODI, Twenty20, Duck Bowling. (One of those I just made up.) It's also complicated because the governing body (ICC) doesn't give the raw score for everyone but just does rankings, and even those are usually only the top countries. However, it turns out to not matter too much because the big boys of cricket are Australia, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, and Sri Lanka... only two of whom made it into our top 20. The only full list of countries I could manage was for ODI (http://icc-live.s3.amazonaws.com/cms/media/about_docs/521e0c2fc00ce-ICC%20Global%20Rankings%2018%20August%202013.pdf) style, and we'll use that in a minute.
Hockey's ranking metric (by way of the IIHF) is incompatible with the other four. How incompatible is it? By their metric, Italy is as good at hockey as the Dominican Republic is at baseball. Obviously that's not going to work for us. What I did instead was look at the past five Olympics for medalists: Canada is the clear #1, then there are five others that are all pretty close (Sweden, USA, Finland, Czech Republic, Russia). Looking at the World Championships over the last 10 years this slightly overrates Canada and the USA.
The only team that's even mildly respectable in both sports is Canada and behind them us, everyone else is at best great at one and terrible at the other (Russia, Australia) or terrible at both (Spain). This leads me to the following estimations:
Countries between 2 and 3, from highest to lowest
Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Italy, Canada, Australia, Great Britain (especially if you somehow factor in Scotland), maybe Netherlands (and after this World Cup is processed they almost certainly will be)
Country between 3 and 4
Russia
Countries between 4 and 5
none
Country between 5 and 6
USA
.
Another way of looking at it is by domestic leagues. With cricket and volleyball it seems like the league infrastructure is nowhere close to the other four, so I just ignored them. My estimates for the top tiers are:
soccer - England, Germany, Spain, Italy
baseball - USA, Japan
basketball - USA, Spain
hockey - USA, Russia
Russia has the second best basketball league in Europe but no real presence in baseball (for some crazy reason) and its soccer league is second class. Unlike soccer the USA is a clear #1 in the other three, so this goes to the USA as well. The more interesting race is between Spain and Russia (again, probably not a coincidence). I think it goes to Russia (again) because the Spanish hockey league is barely alive and that gap more than makes up for the two smaller gaps in soccer and basketball, as well as the tiny gap between the Spanish baseball league and nothing. (And yes, FC Barcelona has won championships in both baseball and hockey. Suck on that, Real Madrid.)
.
#1 USA
#2 Russia
#3 Spain
All six sports have an international governing body, and all six bodies give global rankings. However, these rankings are not based on consistent models: soccer, volleyball, basketball, and baseball use roughly the same, hockey has a much more forgiving metric for sub-elite countries, and cricket is its own deal that I'll get into later. If we take the average of the top four countries and divide any given country into that average, we so happen to get 20 countries with a total of 1 or higher. (For Great Britain I used England's soccer score.)
soccer base basket volley total country
0.79 1.15 1.37 0.63 3.95 USA
1.14 0.14 1.29 0.11 2.68 Spain
0.95 0.16 0.32 1.19 2.63 Brazil
0.68 0.03 0.51 1.18 2.41 Russia
0.90 0.08 0.71 0.59 2.29 Argentina
0.85 0.32 0.11 0.99 2.27 Italy
0.27 0.96 0.01 0.59 1.84 Cuba
0.48 1.06 0.03 0.18 1.75 Japan
1.00 0.12 0.21 0.42 1.74 Germany
0.75 0.66 0.00 0.08 1.49 Netherlands
0.57 0.00 0.28 0.58 1.44 Serbia
0.70 0.04 0.41 0.20 1.35 France
0.40 0.21 0.34 0.22 1.17 Australia
0.22 0.59 0.07 0.27 1.16 Canada
0.87 0.14 0.00 0.11 1.13 Colombia
0.42 0.48 0.04 0.15 1.10 Korea
0.52 0.44 0.05 0.08 1.09 Venezuela
0.55 0.00 0.43 0.04 1.02 Turkey
0.84 0.08 0.10 0.00 1.01 Great Britain
0.36 0.01 0.03 0.61 1.01 Poland
Values taken from FIFA (June 2014), IFAB (not listed so my guess is 2014), FIBA (Sep 2013, they're lazy), and FIVB (Jan 2014) respectively.
Cricket is complicated because there are 4 different kinds of cricket: Test, ODI, Twenty20, Duck Bowling. (One of those I just made up.) It's also complicated because the governing body (ICC) doesn't give the raw score for everyone but just does rankings, and even those are usually only the top countries. However, it turns out to not matter too much because the big boys of cricket are Australia, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, and Sri Lanka... only two of whom made it into our top 20. The only full list of countries I could manage was for ODI (http://icc-live.s3.amazonaws.com/cms/media/about_docs/521e0c2fc00ce-ICC%20Global%20Rankings%2018%20August%202013.pdf) style, and we'll use that in a minute.
Hockey's ranking metric (by way of the IIHF) is incompatible with the other four. How incompatible is it? By their metric, Italy is as good at hockey as the Dominican Republic is at baseball. Obviously that's not going to work for us. What I did instead was look at the past five Olympics for medalists: Canada is the clear #1, then there are five others that are all pretty close (Sweden, USA, Finland, Czech Republic, Russia). Looking at the World Championships over the last 10 years this slightly overrates Canada and the USA.
The only team that's even mildly respectable in both sports is Canada and behind them us, everyone else is at best great at one and terrible at the other (Russia, Australia) or terrible at both (Spain). This leads me to the following estimations:
Countries between 2 and 3, from highest to lowest
Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Italy, Canada, Australia, Great Britain (especially if you somehow factor in Scotland), maybe Netherlands (and after this World Cup is processed they almost certainly will be)
Country between 3 and 4
Russia
Countries between 4 and 5
none
Country between 5 and 6
USA
.
Another way of looking at it is by domestic leagues. With cricket and volleyball it seems like the league infrastructure is nowhere close to the other four, so I just ignored them. My estimates for the top tiers are:
soccer - England, Germany, Spain, Italy
baseball - USA, Japan
basketball - USA, Spain
hockey - USA, Russia
Russia has the second best basketball league in Europe but no real presence in baseball (for some crazy reason) and its soccer league is second class. Unlike soccer the USA is a clear #1 in the other three, so this goes to the USA as well. The more interesting race is between Spain and Russia (again, probably not a coincidence). I think it goes to Russia (again) because the Spanish hockey league is barely alive and that gap more than makes up for the two smaller gaps in soccer and basketball, as well as the tiny gap between the Spanish baseball league and nothing. (And yes, FC Barcelona has won championships in both baseball and hockey. Suck on that, Real Madrid.)
.
#1 USA
#2 Russia
#3 Spain